ABSTRACT
The revolutionary development of information technology (IT) is increasingly considered as one of the most salient concerns in contemporary social and political discourse. The swiftness of the securitisation of IT, and its considerable political impact, makes it a particularly fruitful case for analysing threat politics —how and why some threat images but not others take on societal salience. In 1996 IT appeared as a security problem on the government's agenda—as a separate issue in the very first Swedish IT bill, as well as in a defence bill proper. It will now be argued that the securitisation of IT largely is a result of international policy diffusion. Taken together, the combination of series of events, structural vulnerabilities and actors perceived as threats strongly contribute to the securitisation of IT. In one particular sense, the various frames of IT as a source of security threats are restricted frame, since they present the issue as something that endangers core values.
